The UK’s most popular fantasy football app, the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) saw over 11 million players join in the 2024 season. And last year, according to the Observer, it was on track to beat that, with over 1 million users signing up within 24 hours of its launch. Why are we talking about fantasy football? Because the bike industry is yet to maximise the opportunity that fantasy leagues can present.
From a user’s perspective, fantasy leagues are great ways of creating friendly competition with their mates. Of course, there are some who take it far more seriously than others – with clubs, WhatsApp groups and even prizes. ‘Fantasy Football’ (the American kind) had over 29 million users in 2022. That’s a massive market.
From a marketing or business perspective, being able to utilise something like a fantasy league can open your brand or shop up to reaching more customers. These are already people who are fans of the sport – even if they’re not riding Downhill or XC bikes, they’re likely riding some sort of bike. And these users are engaged. They’re using the platform willingly, and as mountain biking is still pretty niche, the type of user is more likely to be a rider or at least interested in riding mountain bikes.
“Now, there are other companies that do it, sure, but this is the first ever dedicated platform for MTB fantasy alone.”
And that’s where the Race Companion fantasy league comes in. Named in conjunction with the popular Rider Companion podcast hosted by Olly Wilkins and Davi Birks (Davi is one of the co-founders), the Race Companion is the first outright fantasy mountain bike platform and it’s ready to launch for the 2026 season. We sat down with fellow founder, and MD of WorkWith Studios, Adam Dayson to understand how something like a fantasy league platform could benefit not only mountain bike fans, but bike shops and distributors alike.
Before it was known as the Race Companion, during Covid, Kurtis Gassewitz developed a mountain bike fantasy league platform as a “bit of a hobby.” But once he realised it had legs, he reached out to Davi at the podcast and asked if they could collaborate and bring more people into the project. And in year two, Adam came on board, recognising the potential it had for the mountain bike space.
“We’re all super fans of mountain biking and downhill. And in these other sports, there’s this really cool way of engaging with your friends away from the racing, and it’s in fantasy. So we thought, how do we bring that to mountain biking? Now, there are other companies that do it, sure, but this is the first ever dedicated platform for MTB fantasy alone.”
Sure, novelty is a great thing – but how hard has it been to attract brand partners? Particularly during a time where many brands are tightening their purse strings.
“Finding partners is is always a challenge, but we’ve had a really great reception from Marin, who are seeing this as an opportunity to genuinely engage with a target audience of people that love mountain biking, are super engaged with the community, and they get to put their products in front of those people and show they’re a partner.
“I think what’s interesting with Marin is that they make a cross country bike and they make a downhill bike, but they don’t have a downhill or XC team, so this is a way of putting their brand and product in front of that captive audience in a really credible way.
“We’ve also had some really cool partnerships with infisiframe and DMR, who saw it as a really cool opportunity to kind of reach a target audience. The special thing about it is that we know everybody who’s playing is a genuine fan of mountain biking and engaged in in the sport. And so it is a completely captive target audience. So it’s great for brands to get involved.
“Of course, it is still hard, as fantasy is a bit new as well. When we talk to people about podcast advertising, or even meta paid advertising, people are like, ‘Oh, this is scary. It’s new.’ Fantasy hasn’t quite been proven in our industry yet.”
Naturally, fantasy mountain biking won’t be a hard sell to many fans – particularly if they fancy themselves to be the next Tony Seagrave. But what about bike shops and distributors – how can something like this platform be leveraged on the industry side?
“I think one of the biggest challenges is encouraging people to come back into your shop and have that personal experience with you. Trying to drive that footfall, and retain those customers after they’ve come in once and maybe bought a bike or a new helmet etc. How do you keep them engaged in your shop and a part of your community? Now, what fantasy does is it takes that completely online and allows you to do it in the digital space without having to create events or put loads of budget behind something. It’s completely free to operate.
“It also authenticates the bike shop at the same time, helps them show that not only do we want to be a part of the community, we are actually in this scene.”
“So just simply by having an email address and sending your customer an email and saying, ‘Hey, come and join us in our dedicated bike shop fantasy league,’ you are bringing your customers into a place where you can genuinely connect and engage with them and have a bit of fun. You can do it digitally, you can do it on a recurring basis. There are 10 rounds every year. So that’s 10 opportunities to engage with your customers, old and new.
“It also authenticates the bike shop at the same time, helps them show that not only do we want to be a part of the community, we are actually in this scene. We love mountain biking. We love watching sports, and we’re a part of it. And then on top of that, you can leverage your own email marketing database to get people in and give them a reason to come back to your shop.”
Bike shops are increasingly being stretched thin, trying to compete with online discount giants and many are refocusing their efforts into more sustainable operations like workshop-only endeavours. So having a tool that can be easily utilised for free, and without much time sink, it’s got to be a no brainer if you want to involve your customers and show that level of expertise in the mountain biking world.
“You might not even sell downhill bikes, but a lot of people who are interested in even a 140mm trail bike, still may be following the DH at the weekend. And with the shift to Warner Brothers Discovery, with the paywall element to it now, what we’re doing with allowing people to engage with it in that kind of free model. So it’s not a pay to play space. This is free that people can genuinely access. You just need a mobile phone or a laptop, you don’t need to be spending money on it as well.
“The way I think people could look at it is similar to a social platform, or even as a sales or marketing tool.”
“The way I think people could look at it is similar to a social platform, or even as a sales or marketing tool. You can start to talk about it like what products were those guys using? For example, ‘Loic Bruni just won on the latest Specialized tyres, and we’re selling them in the shop for 10% off this weekend.’ So you can use it as a sales driver, if you want to. But also it can just simply be used as a way of having a bit of fun and engagement with your local bike community.
“And we want to empower bike shops to be able to do it themselves, by being able to create their own league, they get complete ownership of it. They can just use the platform that we’ve created. And if people sign up and create their leagues, we will actively help promote those shop’s leagues for them. And that’s something that we want to offer back, when people come in and say, ‘we’re going to be a part of it,’ then we will actively try and promote their league as well to our audience.”
For more information on how to create your own shop league, visit theracecompanion.com
